Archive for February 17th, 2011

17.02.11 – Remember Men at Work, the Australian band from the 80s? If you do, honk your horn, and if you don’t, click on the link or punch it into Pandora. They were a goofy band and I was a goofy kid so their was a natural attraction. One song in particular, Down by the Sea, was their attempt at something a bit more serious. Love down at the waterline, laced with innuendo, which struck a chord with me because I grew up on the shores of The Great Lakes and in the 80s I was laced with hormones.

The song still bounces around in my head every once in a while but these days I find a different message in the lyrics. The opening line is “Down by the sea. I found your hidden treasure.” I was walking down by the frozen Helsinki waterline and had to stop and take some pictures of the unique ice formations. The crystals forming on the surface looked like manna from heaven. A gift from someone or something.

There wasn’t another soul around, so I ventured out onto the ice to get some close-up shots. Even though I was alone, standing on a frozen sea with the temperatures down around -20°C, I still felt close to something alive. The ice continues to move with the momentum of the ocean below so there is the faint, deep and low moan of huge sections of ice slowly grinding together. If you stand still and listen, you can hear the trickles of water just below the surface, little streams of water moving between layers of the ice.

I couldn’t stay for long, this is not my world, and you begin to freeze your tail off if you don’t keep moving. I jumped back onto solid ground and continued on my way, humming a simple tune and thinking to myself that I found a hidden treasure.